


goodnight, moon

by MathildaHilda



Series: until the end of infinity [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Character Study, F/M, Gen, I have the inability to write happy things, POV Second Person, This is so depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 10:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17078825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: You wanted to change reality, and now you can, but bending isn’t changing and it leaves a bitter aftertaste at the back of your mouth.(More than once have you fought against the creations of “great men”.)





	goodnight, moon

You are ten years old and laughing at your father when the floor gives way and your world is gone.

You are ten years old when you hold your brother’s hand and stares at death and imagines the face of the man who could kill you.

You’d seen him on TV the day before, a man shorter than your father and with money stacked taller than the road to the moon.

You are ten years old and you don’t die that day.

Neither does your brother, but that’s an altogether different story.

  
  
  


In another reality, perhaps, it is you who dies.

In another reality, your brother runs and runs and he never really stops.

(In another reality, neither of you die and neither of you live.)

  
  
  


You look at Stark, and all you see is components and titanium so easily broken by the red dancing in your head.

You look at him later, when your home is gone and your brother is gone and you see a tired man filled with broken parts.

(Stark tried to kill you once, _inadvertently perhaps_ , but you know now what you didn’t know then. Beneath the components and factors, he’s just a man as broken as you.)

Even later still, Vision in your mind and between the red of your fingers, you think of him and think of the bomb that couldn’t kill you, all yellow and black and filled with the deaths of your parents.

(Maybe it’s not entirely his fault; you had read about the other man in the picture, but Stark is the one that bears the names of so many people you once knew.)

  
  


 

You wanted to change reality, and now you can, but bending isn’t changing and it leaves a bitter aftertaste at the back of your mouth.

(More than once have you fought against the creations of “great men”.)

  
  


 

You’re not a hero, but had you been born earlier, maybe you would have been a spy.

The doctor had called you a miracle. You’re not a miracle.

You can’t see the miraculous with tearing apart the scientists who got too close; those men who frightened your brother and sent him crashing against a wall to make him calm with yet another needle before yet another test.

(Someone had to clean up that blood later on, when you knelt in your cell and held your brother in another, while doctor smiled from the other side of the glass.)

  
  


 

The creation before you, trapped in a box of metal and alchemy, is filled with pain and longing of things not yet born.

You see the history of it, of this new body of Stark’s newest creation, but something leaves your fingers with a sensation close to numb.

The creation tries for forgiveness before it is even born, and you wish you too could have been that pure.

  
  


 

Peitro always whispered in your head, even if he didn’t mean to, and while some called it a Twin Thing, you didn’t call it anything at all.

Once, Peitro screamed in his sleep and all you could do was sing him yet another lullaby, because you were too weak to reach him. His dreams were yours and your voice was his, and you became so accustomed to his voice inside your head that there was nothing but your own screams left when the pain of silence came.

Pietro was never quiet. Now he was.

  


 

 

You met the child who carried your brother’s name and you wished him the world and more.

He was so small and so light in your hands and the red inside you trembled with the fear of hurting him.

But Nate looked at you with bright eyes so like your brother’s and the storm inside your head was nothing more than a breeze.

  
  


 

Paprikash is as red as the red between your fingers and behind your eyes, but it’s a kinder red when Vision holds it between artificial fingers and tries his best to be human.

Neither of you are human, but you love him for trying.

  
  


 

You plucked guitar strings with slender fingers and sang the songs your mother used to sing and you laughed when Vision tried to sing along with artificial vocal chords that were not quite equipped with the talent of singing.

It’s a sound like no other, not altogether bad but not altogether good, and your heart skips more than once before the end.

  
  


 

You follow Steve into battle twice over (how could you not?) and you always fight for someone you love.  
  
You’ve done this before. You’ve ripped your heart from your sleeve and watched it bleed and whatever Thanos felt could not compare to that pain.  
  
He tears the stone from Vision’s head and dies once again, this time in pain (you know, because you felt it) and you want to burn him where he stands, but the Titan is gone.  
  
(And soon, so are you.)

  
  


 

The world had brightened several shades after you learned to see the world in red, and so the green of the jungle was as breathtaking as ever, if not even more, and you would have reveled in its beauty had it not been for the gray now staining its floor.

The world lost its five hundred shades when Vision fell and a gray wind blew your hair away and your tears created tracks in what it left behind.

Your heart didn’t break when you heard the others call. There was nothing left of it to cut your soul to pieces.

Pietro was whispering.

Vision tried his best to sing.

  
  


 

(12 minutes.

12 minutes, and counting.

  


You’re older now; older now than he ever was.)


End file.
